


Paradise Lost

by AngelOfDeath10



Category: Rurouni Kenshin
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drama, Eventual Romance, F/M, Romance, Wilderness Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-21 15:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21076811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelOfDeath10/pseuds/AngelOfDeath10
Summary: Stranded on a deserted island by forces they couldn't control, Enishi and Kaoru try to make the best of a bad situation. Not quite naked and afraid, but certainly partially clothed and moderately traumatized.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin. If I did the K/K shippers would not have liked my ending. Ho ho ho.
> 
> Originally written in 2019.

Kaoru was sure she was dead, but then she changed her mind.

Death couldn't possibly _hurt_ this much.

As the water forced its way out of her lungs and stomach simultaneously, she was blinded by the sudden sun in her eyes as they shot open. The dark figure that had been giving her the breath of metaphorical and in her case quite literal life fell back to the sand and stifled a groan.

Not a cloud in the sky, Kaoru thought over her burning _everything_. And at first as she tilted her head to the side she thought that it was her vision that was whitewashed, only to find that as her eyes adjusted to the brightness that in fact the sand she was laying on was pristine. She never thought she would get to experience something like this without paying extra for a local to paddle her out somewhere practically untouched by the other tourists. But then she remembered that her short little trip to paradise had ended hours ago when she stepped on that plane. A honeymoon for one hadn't been that fun, as it turned out.

She should have stayed the week, like she originally planned. It wasn't like Aoshi hadn't paid for it all already. She could have gotten a massage. Ordered some more drinks.

But then it was a whole night of ordering drinks and a rather maudlin phone call to Misao at _do you know what time it is_ in the morning that had inspired her to go home early rather than drink and cry her way through the week. Then again, drinking and crying was looking damn good about now.

Kaoru's savior poked her and she flopped her head the other way in the sand before her body convulsed and more briny sea water ejected itself from her stomach and lungs. It was simultaneously a relief and torture. A possibly old man if the white hair was an indicator sat there looking at her—squinting—and the grim line of his mouth seemed to imply that while he might have been internally glad she was alive he wasn't about to whoop with joy over his act of goodwill.

Sprawled out on the sand in a charcoal three-piece suit that was missing an arm off the jacket, he looked poorly outfitted for paradise. With his white shirt plastered to his obviously cultivated arm muscles, Kaoru wondered if maybe she was dreaming him when he poked her again none too gently. She blinked hard and groaned, no vomiting water this time even if her stomach was still cramping as if it wanted to force more out.

"Once you can move, I need your help with something." His tone suited his look, and Kaoru was sure whoever his executive assistant was dreaded that look he was giving her now.

"What?" She just managed to croak between split and stinging lips. No trace of that fruity lip balm she had applied while waiting to board in the weirdly humid airport, just salt and blood.

In response, he turned his back to her and Kaoru saw with mounting horror the huge scrap of metal sticking out of his upper back. All around it was a dark wet patch, but it was the pink halo that was slowly spreading where his jacket ended and the white shirt sleeve began that let her know how freely he was bleeding. It had to hurt like hell. He was lucky it hadn't pierced a lung or something else vital. But what did she know, Aoshi was the doctor.

Slowly sitting up resulted in immediate vertigo and somehow yet more water ejecting from her body. The change in position probably accounted for that, but now that she was upright she was noticing a lot more of her surroundings. The white sand beach that stretched out in either direction, the gently lapping waves so clear she could probably never guess how deep it was a few feet out, and behind them a line of lush jungle. All those stupid conversations she had had with friends about what book they would bring to a desert island flitted through her mind. Kaoru suddenly wished she had watched more survival shows. Misao always complained how Soujiro was obsessed with them, and they would laugh as he would explain that one just never knew when you'd be in a life or death situation. Next time I get lost in a city park I'll keep that in mind, Kaoru had laughed. If she ever saw Soujiro again she'd be eating quite a lot of crow.

"Do you have any internal injuries? A concussion perhaps?" The smooth tenor was so conversational you'd think they were sitting down to a meeting in a boardroom rather than both of them sprawled on a beach.

Kaoru surveyed her body, weakly pulling down her sodden and torn sundress back over her thighs. There were shallow bloody scratches down her arms and legs but she was so numb from either the ocean or shock that they didn't even register. Despite the body aches, the burning lungs, and her cramping stomach she actually felt reasonably ok. That should not have been true, she should have been a bloated corpse at the bottom of the ocean with who knew how many other unfortunates from their ill-omened flight. A sob threatened to close her throat and she pushed the thought of other people far away to the back of her mind.

"I don't think so," she ground out finally as he waited with patience for her answer. Bloodshot aqua eyes concentrated on her with intensity she wasn't used to regardless of circumstance. She worked reception at a big pharma company and she was more used to people not seeing her at all.

"Then hurry up, if we're going to find shelter before dark I have to be conscious and functional, and I need this object out of me."

The whole situation was surreal. Maybe she was dead after all? "I don't think you're supposed to take stuff like that out until you're in a hospital…"

"If it were deep enough to need emergency surgery I'd already be dead. Pull it out quickly then we'll tie my shirt around it. I've seen enough knife wounds to know I'm not dying from this, but I also can't remove it myself."

He'd seen more than one knife wound? "I feel sick."

"And I'm sure you'll feel even worse when the shock kicks in fully, so you need to move fast right now."

Kaoru half crawled over to the man, ripping the now deflated flotation device from around her neck and tossing it to the side. Now that she was closer to him she saw his skin wasn't wrinkled, even if he had the start of some crow's feet between his eyes. Not a smiler, this one. Maybe he wasn't so old as she first thought, either.

"What do I do?" she asked, seeing the jagged metal piece extending from his back.

"I would brace a hand against my back and then pull it out in as close to one smooth motion as possible." He turned his back to her once more and Kaoru felt bile rise in her throat unrelated to the salt water she had just expelled as she tentatively touched the spot next to the metal piece that was wet and sticky with blood. The man took a deep breath.

Kaoru had a feeling her pruny wet hand would just tear to pieces if she tried to pull the metal thing out without protection so she removed her hand from gently touching his back and instead pulled her sodden sundress off and used it as a wrap. She was remembering her last performance assessment with her boss, suddenly: keeps a cool head in a crisis, but needs to work on holding her temper in check more successfully. Once more she touched the man's back to signal to him she was going to make an attempt.

Taking her own deep breath in lungs that immediately punished her for it, Kaoru gave as strong a yank as she could given how cold and shaky her body suddenly felt. The man groaned loudly through what sounded like gritted teeth. It hadn't fully come out but it had shifted significantly. One more pull should do it.

"I'm so sorry, I just need to do it one more time and then I think—"

"Stop talking and do it!" The man snapped.

Well, she couldn't blame him for being testy, but getting scolded brought a flush of welcome anger that provided the energy she needed to give one more vicious yank that took her tumbling backwards despite only being on her knees to begin with. The man slumped over and for a second Kaoru thought she had killed him. Bloody metal clutched in hand, she watched the man strip off his ripped suit jacket and vest, leaving a shirt with a radiating red and pink spot on his back. Once the shirt was off as well he paused.

"How does it look?" He turned his head towards her at last and Kaoru saw a dark eyebrow arch which reminded her she had done nothing but watch him undress for the past couple minutes. She was sitting there in a rather impractical pair of sea foam green panties and matching bra. Six more identical sets in different colors had been in the luggage that was no doubt at the bottom of the ocean at this moment. Kaoru had packed for this trip ages ago, she had been so excited for it, and she hadn't bothered to repack even when there wasn't going to be anyone to see all that cute underwear she had bought.

Use your words, Kaoru. "It looks like a hole in your back the size of four quarters."

"Most of that is probably the blood surrounding it. You're going to need to take my shirt and make sure you wrap it tightly around my torso and over the wound."

"Hold on, let me just…" Kaoru unwrapped her wet dress from the metal piece and then shook it out and pulled it back on with some difficulty. The man watched her dispassionately until she finished and approached him once more. His hand was steady as a rock as he gave her the stained shirt, and Kaoru wondered how he was able to be so calm when her body was starting to shake in earnest despite the day not being cold.

Silently, with only Kaoru's occasional hmms as she tried to tie the shirt around his broad torso and the man's hisses of pain when she had to move it around, the deed was done. As soon as she had finished her job, the man picked up his suit vest and put it back on, even if he couldn't button it all the way up with the shirt sleeve knot in the way near his pectorals. He had slowed down a bit, probably struggling against the pain, and Kaoru stared out at the ocean with her shivering body reminding her this was all terribly real.

An only slightly damp jacket was dropped around her shoulders, probably bespoke judging from the quality of it as she ran her fingers over the fine wool of the one sleeve. The man was blocking the sun, standing tall above her, his white hair illuminated at the edges by the backlighting. Unreadable, he extended a hand to help her up. In his other hand he held the long, jagged metal piece that had formerly been in his body as if it were a sort of short sword. It was probably the closest thing they had to a tool between them.

"You're in shock. Take the jacket and stay warm. We need to get out of the sun and move to the tree line. Getting sun stroke won't do us any favors."

Kaoru accepted his hand to stand on unsteady bare feet and felt a few callouses, but they were not workman's hands. Who was this businessman who seemed to be made of steel and willpower while she was slowly melting down inside her own mind? She used his confidence as her true north and followed him to towards the jungle.

"My name is Kaoru." Her teeth chattered as she spoke before she thought to add. "Kaoru Sh—Kamiya. Kaoru _Kamiya_." She said more solidly hoping he hadn't caught her slip of the tongue. After practicing saying the other for months she had almost messed up her own name. Anger heated her, smoothing out her shivers for a moment before they returned in force and she tried to gather the suit jacket more closely to her body. It smelled like the sea and the man's sweat.

"Enishi Yukishiro." His voice was terse. "Stay close to me, my glasses were lost in the crash and if you're more than twenty feet away you might as well not exist."

Eyeing the dense foreign vegetation and the unknown miles of probably uninhabited island, Kaoru didn't think staying close was going to be much of a problem.


	2. The Beach

Somehow Enishi had built a small smoky fire, and they were huddled next to it in relative silence as twilight descended. Bugs where everywhere and Kaoru slapped at them ineffectively. It was better when the smoke blew in her direction, but that inevitably also led to coughing and her lungs continued to burn in that recriminating way that told her she might not be able to sleep until she was so exhausted she just blacked out. Enishi sat across from her concentrating on the fire, and Kaoru tried to ignore her minor aches as she clutched his jacket close to her like a safety blanket and not just baldly stare at him. Without him this would have been much worse. Without him, a little voice reminded her, she would have been dead on a beach.

"Were you headed home, too?" Kaoru hazarded.

There was a period of silence long enough that she wondered if he had heard her, but as she opened her mouth to repeat the question he cut her off. "Yes."

"Did you come with anyone?"

"No."

Kaoru sighed. "Neither did I. It's a relief in a way, because if I had they would have been on the same flight."

"It was a last-minute itinerary change," Enishi volunteered reluctantly. "My direct flight had been canceled and this was the next best my assistant could arrange on short notice."

That was interesting. Maybe he had come from China? "Do you always travel a lot for work?"

"Yes."

The silence stretched between them again and Kaoru felt her annoyance rise. Handsome, competent, fit, but socially backwards. Kaoru would have to try twice as hard to grasp at a sense of normalcy when talking with him was like pulling teeth. Would it hurt him to pretend to be friendly with the only other human on this island?

"I was supposed to come with someone, but those plans fell through. I decided I would go anyway since the tickets were nonrefundable." Kaoru looked to see if that sparked some interest in her silent companion. He barely glanced up, clearly not intrigued by her tawdry problems. That just made her want to share _more_. "Honestly, it was my former fiancée. I was supposed to be married a week before last Saturday. As you can tell, that didn't precisely, um, happen." She held up the bald left hand where her rings should have been—where her engagement ring had been until a month ago.

Enishi was watching her, clearly listening, but not seeking extra information like most people would. It was almost refreshing after weeks of being whispered about at work while people pretended they weren't pitying her. It had gotten so aggravating that Kaoru had decided to take the vacation by herself; after all she had already requested the PTO and she had nothing to lose. Or so it had seemed at the time.

Maybe direct questions would net her some answers. "What do you do?"

"I'm a consultant." Enishi answered slowly. "… Cyber security."

"Oh come on," Kaoru huffed, losing her temper a bit despite trying to be calm and respectful. "You have to give me a little more to work with than that. For one I have no idea what that even is. For another I don't care what you tell me so long as you just use _more words_. I want to hear another human's voice a little bit."

Brows drawing together in a way that totally explained those growing crow's feet, Enishi gave her a scowl then did actually add a little more. "I find security flaws in software that large companies use to record their financial and personnel information, as well as the outward facing programs their clients interact with. I offer my consulting services to them if I think the breach would be embarrassing enough for them were it made public."

Kaoru nodded along but now she felt her own brows draw together. "Wait, they don't hire you to come in, you just come to them when you find a problem?"

"Yes."

"And if they don't pay you, then they are left with the knowledge that they have some huge issue and no idea what it is and how to fix it?"

"Essentially." He gave her a slight smile, pleased that she at least grasped the animus of his work.

Considering how he was dressed and how he carried himself clearly he was fantastic at what he did and it made him a lot of money, but Kaoru came away with the feeling like his job was basically extortion. Corporations may have a lot of the same rights as a person, but they didn't have feelings so she wasn't particularly disturbed by his work conceptually. Then, something else occurred to her.

"You just find this stuff out theoretically right? You don't actually take their data do you?"

Now Enishi's smile was both full and sinister. "At some point proof has to be offered of the problem."

It wasn't something she could condone, but at the same time it wasn't like he was going around shooting people. It was a world so beyond her own that she wasn't even really sure if what he was doing was considered wrong in the circles he travelled in, or just business as usual. Most businessmen seemed like they were crooks on some level anyway, so maybe she needed to be less holier than thou.

"You don't approve." Enishi said, stating a fact that was written all across Kaoru's face. She couldn't play poker either, if he was curious.

"Well, no, but it's not for me to lecture anyone on how to live their life. It's not like I'm doing that great." And the floodgates of self-pity opened. "After all, most of my savings are drained from a wedding that didn't even happen, and I just had to move into a crap apartment because the one I thought I was leaving had already been leased to someone else. I'm the only thing half the office is gossiping about so every work day is like my worst day in high school, and now I'm stuck on a desert island with a guy who I'm pretty sure only saved my life because he couldn't reach a piece of metal sticking out of his back. And who knows what happened to all those other people…"

All that was missing was a dramatic flounce, but she didn't have anywhere to go so instead Kaoru just laid down on her side and faced away from the fire. She didn't want Enishi to see the hot tears of stress and frustration that had started to leak from her eyes. Kaoru wasn't sure what pretending at strength was getting her when this man had seen her at her literal worst, and would probably continue to as she was decidedly not ok. The hunger and thirst she felt was exaggerating her reactions, but she felt like she was allowed a little bit of drama given the events of the day. She wiped her runny nose with Enishi's expensive jacket sleeve and tried not to sniffle too loudly.

"I didn't just save you to help me." Enishi's voice felt like it pounced on her as it emerged from the dark. Only the tiny fire and the crescent moon provided any light now that the sun had fully set. "I'm not that kind of monster."

She heard him add more twigs to the fire as the radiant heat hit her back. It was probably the closest thing she could expect to a hug right now, and Kaoru wished she was anywhere but here even as she sent a silent prayer to the heavens that the other hundred odd people on her flight had been recovered and rescued.

Where there was life there was hope.

"Thank you, by the way." Kaoru responded, and she heard Enishi's amused snort. It would have been hard to know what exactly he found funny about her statement.

***

The fire had gone out while they were both asleep and Kaoru shivered in the early morning cold. It was being too cold that had awakened her, and it would have happened much earlier except that Enishi had curled himself around her back and the shared body heat was the only part of her body that felt pleasant. She could already feel itchy spots on her legs where the bare skin had been bitten by bugs as she slept her mercifully dreamless sleep. It hadn't been that restful or restorative, but her brain didn't feel as foggy as last night. Kaoru gave a little gasp when Enishi pulled her in closer with an arm around her middle, like she was a favored stuffed animal.

The urge to snuggle was strong, and Kaoru was unable to parse whether that came from the desire to be close to anyone or the desire to be close to him in specific. She needed to be on the lookout for wobbly feelings considering he saved her life and she was in a very vulnerable position out here alone with him. Even injured he seemed formidable. It wasn't like she was totally malformed, and while not conventionally beautiful like her best friend Megumi or athletically appealing like her cousin Misao there was something special that had initially attracted Aoshi at least.

Even if it turned out that that was all he thought she was: a cute face, a passable body, and most importantly a low maintenance girlfriend. God, how that argument still galled her. He had been settling for her. Passion is overrated, he had said. Stability is what matters, he had said. It was supposed to be a nice evening, where they wrote out their vows and instead it became a relationship ending argument. Pots were thrown. Police were called—by Aoshi's downstairs neighbor—and suddenly Kaoru found herself picking up her toiletries from his bathroom at far too late on a worknight.

That should have tipped him off that she was serious. One didn't move one's shampoo without real conviction. But he didn't stop her.

He didn't stop her.

"Stop what," since his lips were right behind her ear, Kaoru's whole body went stiff when Enishi spoke.

"Nothing, I was just thinking of back home." She should have been irritated at their intimate positioning, legs tangled together, but she knew it was for survival not a weird pick up artist trick. She had heard from Megumi once that her on and off boyfriend Sano had tried the infamous 'naked man' move on their second date. Enishi was no Sano. The man had not indicated he even saw her as a woman, or if he liked women... or people. Kaoru lifted a leg enough to itch at a particularly worrisome bump above her knee, unable to ignore the itching a second longer but also unwilling to withdraw from Enishi's warmth.

They lay there for a few more minutes in that space of time before the sun was officially up for the day, and Kaoru could have sworn she felt Enishi's hand twitch when a shift in positioning forced it to brush against the underside of her breast. She forgot all about it shortly thereafter when her stoic companion suddenly pulled away and left her cold.

"Take these," He tossed his shoes in her direction. "We need to find water and the only way to do that is move inland."

"They'll be like clown shoes on me."

"You can take the socks instead, but I assumed you'd need the extra protection." They both glanced down at Kaoru's feet with the pedicure that was still largely intact. Kaoru burrowed her royal purple toes in the sand as if to hide them. She hated that he was right again, and he had his arms crossed in front of him as if waiting for her to admit to his superior planning skills.

Without saying another word, Kaoru dusted off her feet and calves as well as she could and tied the laces as tightly as she was able after slipping her feet into the shoes. As suspected, she was swimming in them, but it was a better approach than tromping through the jungle with no protection. While Kaoru had been fiddling with the footwear, Enishi had been dusting himself off and picking up the jagged metal piece.

"These shoes look like they were expensive." Kaoru tried to say something conversational, even though he had proven time and again yesterday that he was a lost cause in respect to small talk.

Enishi used a swift downward motion to separate a long thin branch from a nearby bush. He was already making a pile to add to the one he had started the evening before. "They were."

Kaoru wondered if he was being infuriating on purpose because he liked winding her up, but he seemed to register something in her expression when he finally looked at her because he added a little more for her sake.

"Those things matter when you're in a boardroom, but if you're asking me if I'm upset that they will get ruined here and now, then the answer is no."

"That wasn't what I meant," Kaoru said with a sigh, helping him shift the branches over to the SOS that mostly Enishi had laid out yesterday on the beach after sparking the fire. It was huge and hopefully they had built it well enough and large enough to be seen from high above them. The wind had knocked some of the branches out of place overnight. "I'm just trying to get to know you better. You're not making it easy!"

Getting far too close to her, forcing Kaoru to look up at him with what she knew was a somewhat exasperated facial expression, Enishi stuck the metal piece in the sand and made sure they had full eye contact before he responded. "We never would have spoken to one another if we were not in this situation, and I see no purpose in pretending like we're friends." He sneered the word in such a way that Kaoru seriously doubted he had any friends at all.

"Are we enemies?" Kaoru asked simply. He wasn't the first arrogant man in a suit she'd dealt with, and if their SOS worked he wouldn't be the last either.

Enishi blinked down at her, momentarily wrong footed. "No."

"Allies then?" Kaoru asked, turning on her best receptionist smile. She knew it was a good smile, that it made people feel warm inside, and it was one of the reasons why she was often brought in to deal with the pricklier chemists and unfriendly doctors. It was how she had met Aoshi. Kaoru, for all her moments of temper, knew how to make people feel seen and accepted. "I haven't been much use to you yet, but I promise you I'm a hard worker and you've shown me you know what you're doing. I trust you."

Unable to come up with a biting comment in the face of her almost embarrassing sincerity, Enishi simply allowed his eyebrows to draw together once more. "Just keep up and don't wander off."


	3. The House

The humidity was oppressive, causing Kaoru to sweat out precious water she could ill afford to lose. They had found a mature coconut palm and Enishi had used the metal piece to open up several that had fallen so that they could retrieve the water from inside, but it had tasted near rancid so they hadn't tried the meat. Despite that, they both drank greedily and decided to continue the journey inland. Rather, Enishi had decided they should continue inland and Kaoru had done her best to 'keep up' despite the terrible blisters forming on her feet from wet skin rubbing against expensive leather. Complaining wouldn't have accomplished much, so she tried to distract herself by remembering as much of her favorite songs as she could.

After what could have been hours for all Kaoru knew given the position of the sun was almost impossible to see beyond the canopy above them, Enishi whirled on her as she was humming the chorus of some top 40 hit she vaguely recalled.

"Is that necessary?!"

Taking a steadying breath, Kaoru did the calculus all women do around angry men, and decided to go with diffusing the situation since his eye was twitching a little.

"I can stop."

Closer to the edge that he had been with a metal pole sticking out of his back, Enishi spat out, "This is a serious situation and it's hard enough to stay aware of the surroundings without you singing off key behind me."

He may have been right, but she wasn't a soldier, she was a damn receptionist! "I don't know what kind of superior mental training goes into being a computer programmer but from where I'm sitting all I see is trees, bushes, and a whole lot of bugs."

"Just because you can't sense something doesn't mean you aren't in danger. I'm forced to be alert enough for both of us since you're insisting on stomping your way everywhere."

"Well I'm sure your socks aren't filling with blood, unlike my shoes." It felt good to say something snarky back, particularly because it was true. In actuality, the slickness in the shoes was from popped blisters, but it might as well have been blood.

Enishi gave her that considering look, as if trying to understand the meaning of what she said, then swept over and knelt in front of her. He lifted one of her feet and pulled off the shoe, seeing the mass of blisters her feet were becoming. Not quite furious, but definitely more than annoyed, he looked up at her from his vantage point.

"You should have told me." Back to the ice prince, all trace of temper hidden. He quickly stripped off his thick woolen socks and placed them on her feet instead after taking the shoes. "If it hurts too much, we'll wrap leaves around your feet outside the socks, but if you step softly then nothing should poke through easily. You're useless if you're immobile."

"Thank you," Kaoru was touched by both his tender treatment and how quickly he had believed her and acted on the problem, even if his motivations were calculated. How many times had she complained to Aoshi about tension headaches after work to have him totally ignore her? Maybe Enishi would have ignored her as well, but in her imagination he would at least throw a bottle of aspirin her way. It was a weird domestic thought, and in her tired mind Enishi and Aoshi juxtaposed. "Aren't you in any pain?"

Enishi finished tying his reclaimed shoe and stood up once more, sweat dripping down his forehead. "Yes."

"How do you ignore it then?"

"Have you ever worked out so hard you needed to throw up?"

It was such a confusing response that Kaoru gaped at him a moment, "Maybe once or twice?"

"Did you stop exercising after it happened?"

Kaoru felt like she was failing a test the way he looked at her when she responded, "Yeah…"

"I don't."

Examining the corded muscles on his arms, Kaoru's eyes slid back to his face where something self-satisfied was hinted at in the upwards slant of his mouth. He knew she was admiring him, and he was proud of his physique. Maybe if she worked out like she was training for the Olympics then she would be proud of her body as well. Kaoru wasn't a total slouch, but it had been a while since she's had a tennis racquet in her hand, and possibly even longer since she'd gone on a jog. Wedding planning had eaten her free time last year and a half pretty efficiently.

Still hurting, but reminding herself to tough it out if Enishi could with a hole in his back, Kaoru followed as silently as she was able.

***

The house was a pleasant surprise, even if it did look like the jungle had made an effort to swallow it whole. They had walked uphill for what felt like the whole day, but as they broke into the clearing she saw that it was only likely early afternoon, if that. Their hike had only taken the morning, perhaps five hours. Whatever the circumstances, the house was utterly deserted and partially covered in creeping vines.

As if sensing she wanted to run over to it, Enishi held out an arm to bar her passing him. "Stay close."

Kaoru sighed, but did as he asked and as they approached the house she tried to feel some hope. Clearly, it was possible to survive on this island until help found them. And who knew what the house would contain! It was the kind of excitement that lifted her spirits, and she touched Enishi's arm to get his attention. He glanced back at her tentative smile, and the frown he was sporting flattened out into a more neutral expression. Kaoru guessed that he was already projecting at least five different dire circumstances.

"Be careful on the stairs and don't go out on the porch, it looks like parts of it have rotted all the way through and the last thing I need is for you to break an ankle." Yep, he was already imagining terrible things.

It was a weird sort of caring, so Kaoru rolled her eyes and followed her white-haired companion in without a peep. As he suspected, the stairs leading to the front door were rotted and one collapsed under Enishi's weight immediately. The rest only groaned. The door was locked, but partially come away from its hinges so the only thing holding it up was really the series of interior locks. Enishi gave it a solid kick and it collapsed enough inwards that they could slide inside near the hinges.

There was dust, dried animal droppings, and dead insects all over the floor but more importantly it was spacious and dry and it looked like the house itself was built of sturdy material even if the outside fixtures had not been. There were chairs in a living room area, but they were sad things listing to the side or with broken pieces hanging off of them. Books were on a bookshelf, but Kaoru was sure they would disintegrate as soon as she touched them.

"That looks like a kitchen…"

"I'll search the perimeter outside. There is no evidence that anyone has lived here in decades so you should be reasonably safe."

"I appreciate your concern," Maybe. Probably. Enishi hadn't sounded convinced that she wouldn't find some way to hurt herself spontaneously in this empty house. She wasn't some empty-headed ninny, no matter how hungry she was! "Go on, I'm fine." Kaoru made a shooing motion and Enishi gave her a bland look as he walked back out the broken doorway.

The kitchen was small, with a squat wood burning stove in the center, and a few countertops near it that probably were used for food prep long ago. Under the countertops were small aluminum pots that looked old but didn't seem otherwise effected. In the walk-in larder Kaoru found lots of jars and cans with faded labels in Chinese. There may have been a rice sack, but it had long ago rotted away or been eaten and shreds of fabric were all that was left on the floor. Nothing in here was safe to eat, but she was amazed there was so much. Whoever had left here had left many months of food behind. At least the utensils and cookware were probably still useful.

Wandering into one of several other rooms, Kaoru found a collapsed bed with a rotted mattress. No goodnight rest here, but at least if she swept things out and got rid of the mattress they could have a relatively dry night indoors. Additional rooms revealed two more bedrooms, and two storage rooms. There was a bathroom that held an empty tin bathtub with no faucet, a ceramic sink with no faucet, and a mirror.

Kaoru wandered back into one of the store rooms as there were large chests there that intrigued her. The first one opened easily and she saw that there was nothing in it but bottles. The labels were cracked and brown, and the parts she could make out seemed to be in Chinese so that was a dead end. Who knew what they contained? Better to not risk it.

The next chest was proving difficult to open so Kaoru put some muscle into it and leveraged it onto its side. Bracing her heel against the handle, she tried to force it open and was rewarded when the seal broke to the chest with a sucking noise. Kaoru almost cried with happiness as she saw clean, dry clothes tumble out of it. Plenty of plain white button up short sleeve shirts and grey pants with suspenders were to be found, but they all looked sized for someone about Kaoru's height. The only thing she found that looked like it might fit Enishi was a fancier outfit underneath it all. It felt like silk, and it looked more like an old-fashioned Chinese outfit like you'd see in a period movie. But clean clothes were clean clothes! Kaoru quickly slipped into a shirt and pants and she even found some slipper-like shoes that were just a smidge too big but much better than the socks.

No combs, but she ran her fingers through her long hair before retying it into a serviceable bun and securing it with some chopsticks she had found in the kitchen. They were food chopsticks, not hair chopsticks, but they did the trick.

Kaoru put her dress and Enishi's socks in a pile near the door, vowing to find a way to wash them, then moved into the next store room. In a corner, haphazardly thrown to the side, was a radio and microphone. She got so excited she could barely contain herself, and didn't bother to look at anything else in the room. A radio!

"Enishi!" Kaoru called, "I found something!"

Hastily running outside, she stumbled on the broken step in her haste. Loudly cursing, she saw Enishi round the corner, eyes wide and clutching the metal piece like he meant real business. When he saw she was fine he visibly deflated, definitely mad that she was crying wolf.

"I found a radio!" When his reaction was less than thrilled, she threw up her hands in his direction. "Hello? A radio? Like with a microphone and wires and stuff! It may be older than both of us put together but it isn't like radios work that much differently now, right? We can call for help!"

"I'm aware what a radio is for, but I'm assuming it needs electricity, and the generator I found in the shed doesn't look like its been in working order for at least half a century. And even if it wasn't a pile of rust we don't have any fuel for it." Enishi so quickly popped every single happy thought filtering through her head that she probably looked like she physically deflated. "Where are your clothes?"

"Oh, right, I found some stuff in the house. At least we can have a change of clothes. And if we find anything edible I could probably try my hand at cooking it."

Interested, Enishi cocked his head to the side and gestured for her to lead him to the storage rooms. Still disappointed by the radio, Kaoru managed to avoid the broken step and slowly make her way indoors properly. She hadn't found a broom yet, so she might have to fashion one out of branches or something. All the small animal droppings were seriously gross.

She was picking up the clothes out of the chest and showing them to him while he ignored the fashion show and examined the contents of one of the bottles. Kaoru sighed. "I don't exactly read Chinese or whatever, so who knows what's in that."

Unfastening the wax top of one, he picked out the cork and gave it a sniff. "It's probably laudanum." At Kaoru's blank expression he clarified. "Opium."

"Oh. OH." She supposed a house hidden on a remote island probably wasn't used for any legitimate purposes, and so it shouldn't be such a shock. But that begged the question why the people here had abandoned everything so quickly and never come back. Worry ate her alongside the hunger.

Enishi was trying to refasten the top to the bottle, but fumbled it and the bottle hit the floor with a tinkling crash. It didn't shatter so much as crack and the fluid immediately leaked through the cracks in the floorboard. He put a hand to his head, taking a slow deliberate breath.

"Did you find a bedroom?"

"Yes," Kaoru said, approaching him with her hand outstretched but not sure enough of herself and their relationship to offer a comforting touch. "Do you need to lie down? It's not very clean yet…"

"That isn't going to matter," He said cryptically, unfastening the buttons to his vest and pants.

Bristling, Kaoru wondered if she had misjudged him all this time. "Hey, now, I don't know what you're thinking but it's certainly not the time or place to be thinking about something like that. First of all, you're sure flattering yourself to think that I would leap into—"

"There's a water pump outside," Enishi interrupted through clenched teeth as he sank to his knees, clothes unfastened. "Boil it first, no matter how clean you think it is…" His eyes rolled back in his head as he sank to the floor with a groan and Kaoru ran to his side.

He was hot as the sun, hotter than a person should have been even in this heat and humidity. Ripping off the vest he had unfastened, she similarly pulled off the shirt bandage and saw how red and angry his back looked with the reddest, angriest part around his wound. Infection.

"You stubborn bastard." Kaoru said as she contemplated how to drag him into the bedroom when he was about a million pounds of muscle. Probably best to let him lie here until she got it cleaned out, then drag him. "You should have said something earlier." Remembering how he had scolded her for not telling him about her ailments, she wished he were less of a hypocrite. Not that they would have been able to do anything about what she realized had been a steadily worsening condition.

All she could do was wait and pray. And find some food.

He had saved her life, and now it was up to her to protect his. She didn't even have time to be scared, there was too much to do with the day. Smoothing back greasy white hair from a hot forehead, she wondered at how much younger he looked when he wasn't frowning. Almost vulnerable.

"I got this, Enishi. Trust me." But even Kaoru didn't know if that was true.


	4. The Meal

Kaoru had never felt like she had thought this clearly in her life. The first few hours of trying to get Enishi situated were back breaking in the literal sense, but it all laid out before her as if someone had drawn her a map. First, dig a fire pit outside and get a pot of water boiling. Second, clean out a bedroom and make sure there was an approximation of a bed. Third, situate Enishi, bathe him (or at least clean off his back), and drink the rest of the purified water before boiling more water. Megumi's annoying boyfriend used to bug Kaoru all the time about the benefits of intermittent fasting, and she always told Sano to go to hell in the past because she liked food and saw no reason to starve herself. Now, as day two of no food was coming to a close, she felt almost spiritual about it. It might have been the key to her eerie calm about everything she had to accomplish.

Enishi, for his part, was in some sort of personal hellscape from the way he mumbled in his fever dreams. Someone named 'Neesan' played a large role in his mutterings and Kaoru wondered if she would get the nerve up to ask him right up until she remembered with a smack to her forehead that he was saying sister. A couple of semesters of Japanese in college should have rubbed off more considering how much her grandparents had wanted her to learn the language. Her grandmother had been adamant that being a Kamiya was something she needed to take pride in, but she felt so distant from her heritage to the point that when Misao was dragging her to cultural events she barely felt Japanese at all. Misao was fluent, and with her petite good looks she also fit all the clothes like they should be fit. Kaoru vaguely remembered visiting relatives in Tokyo one summer in high school and feeling both fat and distinctly out of place.

There had been mosquito netting in the second storage room, as well as a bunch of rotted bedding, so Kaoru used the clothes and a bunch of wide leaves as padding under Enishi. A rock and some rusty metal spikes she found in the storage shed allowed her to roughly hang the mosquito netting above them. It would have to do for the night, and as darkness closed around them Kaoru found herself drawing closer to Enishi. She wasn't afraid of the dark, not really, but as darkness fell the feeling of being alone pressed in and that was more than her soul could bear at the moment. As Enishi mumbled wordlessly to himself, Kaoru pretended like they were having a conversation until she fell asleep. It was, she would admit, a low point for her as well as him but at least _he_ wouldn't remember it.

Kaoru talked about Aoshi mostly, because everyone else had wanted to hear her talk about it and she had blown them off. While Enishi was insensible he was a pretty fantastic listener, and it was way better to worry about her personal life than their basic survival.

"He told me I could keep the ring to sell. It wasn't inexpensive, either, he had done the traditional thing which I think he told me was two months of income? His income isn't insubstantial so, yeah. When he told me how much it was worth I was so excited and then immediately scared I would lose it somehow. Or break it, if that makes any sense. How do you break a diamond? I would look down at it, how all the diamonds set on the sides would sparkle and I should have known then and there that he didn't get me. I hated that ring. It was gaudy. But I told him I loved it." Enishi flopped awkwardly to the side and his arm smacked her in the stomach. With a cough and a low curse Kaoru gently set the offending limb to the side. "I told him it was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given to me. I really wanted it to be, too."

Kaoru kissed his forehead again as it was the only way she could reliably tell his temperature when her own was fluctuating as night fell and the shivering set in. She might have been more resilient if she had fuel in her body, but she was burning fat reserves at this point and had the bad breath to prove it.

"You remind me of him, Aoshi. At least you did at first. You both have this way of freezing a girl with a look, and I don't think either of you smile without a good reason. But then you got angry and I realized you couldn't be anything like him because Aoshi didn't run hot when he was angry he just froze me out harder. I knew he was mad at me because he would get scary polite. Then he would stop using contractions…" She put on a fake male voice, knowing it was a pretty sorry impression. "I can not believe you would think of doing that. I have not experienced such embarrassment since you yelled across an entire banquet hall that you had reserved our seats. You lack decorum!"

Kaoru laughed at her own bad Aoshi voice.

"For the record, there were plenty of other people talking and I'm sure no one else noticed when I called his name. He just has really high standards for 'ladylike' behavior and I don't think I would ever have learned all the rules, or followed them even if I knew them. I think he had good intentions, but I wasn't the girl to tick off the box on his to do list that said 'wife'."

Enishi shivered and called for his sister again. Kaoru scooted closer, hoping her proximity would comfort him even if she couldn't do much about the fever other than wipe a wet shirt over his forehead now and then. She had already cleaned the wound as well as she could and changed the dressing on it by boiling his shirt in a pot of water and then rewrapping it around his chest and back. Clad in nothing but the shirt bandage, some expensive looking black boxer briefs she wasn't about to remove, and the silk pants that had been in the chest and which she had struggled to get him into, Kaoru felt like he wouldn't feel too exposed when he joined the conscious world again. Laundry was one thing on her to do list for tomorrow along with food, though food was bolded, capitalized, and italicized in her mind.

"Maybe I was willing to overlook it all because I was tired of being lonely. I wanted a family again." Kaoru paused and Enishi cried out, his voice hoarse from the constant babble. "You seem pretty lonely, too. Deep down. But I also don't think you're the kind of guy who would propose to a girl because you thought that's what people did."

It occurred to Kaoru that he was a computer programmer who knew how to treat knife wounds and who knew what opium smelled like. Clearly there was more to him than business meetings and coding. Hopefully he would pull himself out of this fever and she'd get to learn more about who Enishi Yukishiro really was. She had to be hopeful because the alternative was too bleak given the circumstances.

As she curled up next to him, too tired to pretend anything, his arms encircled her instinctively and his babbling ceased. Enishi shivered, still miserable and unconscious, but Kaoru knew she was doing him good by not keeping her distance. Touch was important for healing. Or so she told herself.

***

Stiff, cold, and moist in that way she hated because it reminded her of every camping trip Misao had ever talked her into going on in their college years, Kaoru woke to find Enishi about the same as she had fallen asleep to but luckily no worse. His breathing was labored, and she ladled some purified water into his mouth until she got too hasty and he instinctively choked. It wouldn't do to drown him, and she was too tired to do this job properly. Time to get her butt out of 'bed' and get foraging.

Just to be safe she grabbed the metal piece, even if she was unlikely to have the gumption to use it on anything living. Then again, survival instincts ran strong in her as she was starting to realize now that Enishi was out of commission.

"I'll be back soon to check on you, if you can hear me in there," She cringed. That sounded stupid. Oh well, he wasn't giving her an eye roll or a wry comment so she was probably in the clear.

She had rinsed her underwear yesterday, scrubbing them with a funny smelling bar of soap she had found in storage and even if it had no lather it did seem to clean those ridiculous garments. In the storage room she had made a neat pile of the clothes she and Enishi had arrived in and thought about doing laundry first only because she had some idea how to go about doing it. Ultimately, she gathered her wits and set out down the trail that led from the house instead.

The morning was full of strange birdsong and the rustling of bushes and Kaoru found herself jumping at every noise. The fourth time a whistling bird caused her to swing the metal piece around she told herself, out loud, to stop being such a damn coward. Enishi was counting on her, she had to remember that. What she couldn't do for herself she could do for someone else and she squared her shoulders in the ill fitting shirt she had already stress sweat through the armpits and marched herself down the twisting trail.

There was nothing by the water except a rotted pier. Not even a scuppered boat she could dream of salvaging. Kaoru took the time to make another SOS out of branches since there was a good space for it on the beach, and that killed an hour or two of the morning. She was dreading needing to go off trail and think up a marking system so she wouldn't get lost, a la Hansel and Gretel but with 100% less bread, when as she walked down the beach she noticed a weirdly cleared out spot. It extended inland a bit and there was no way she could get lost in an open field so she explored.

At the end of the clearing, to her shock, were two airplanes. They were different colors and she could make out a faded star on the body of one and a still red circle on the body of the other. She didn't want to get any closer than she was, despite knowing that these planes had been here easily as long as the house had been abandoned given the way vegetation was trying to reclaim them. Too afraid that there were creepy skeletons in the cockpits, Kaoru started to back away with wide eyes and tripped, falling on her butt in the damp soil.

Groaning at herself for generating more laundry, she finally focused in on one of the plants in the field and blinked hard in recognition. She had been thinking of her obaachan this morning and it was as if the spirit of her grandmother had led her to salvation: taro. A whole field of taro. She would know these plants anywhere, even years after she had been forced to weed her grandmother's garden.

Using the metal piece creatively, Kaoru loosened the damp soil around a few plants that looked likely and pulled up breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She wasn't a huge fan of the leaves, but they would be edible too and hunger was excellent seasoning. Even though digging up the plants was tedious, dirty work, Kaoru was so excited by the prospect of food that she had gotten second and third winds. There was a whole field of them, too! Taro had never been her favorite, but it would forever after have a special place in her heart.

Taking off her shirt, walking around in nothing on top but a bra and suspenders, Kaoru bundled up her treasures and started back for the house. There might have been shame involved some other day, worries of sunburns at the very least, but nothing was more important than protecting these ugly roots until she could get back to the house and peel them.

***

Kaoru was on a roll. Not only had she prepared and eaten several taro roots (which she had eaten too quickly and immediately almost thrown up), but she had found honeysuckle! Another dredged up memory from her grandmother's garden, she vaguely remembered her grandmother forcing her to rub it on a burn one day. At the time Kaoru had been confused why the old lady had done it, but even if it was superstition it couldn't hurt. Who knows, maybe it would do Enishi some good. So there she was, watching the laundry dry on the deck railings and crushing honeysuckle to make a paste to smear on Enishi's back. If nothing else it would make him smell amazing, and given he had been sick and sweating all day, he needed a little help in the scent department.

The taro she had prepared and mashed for him sat in ceramic bowl next to the other ceramic bowl of purified water, and Kaoru made sure it was far away from where he could knock either over and proceeded to change his bandage. As before, she didn't think he was getting worse but neither was he improving, and Kaoru wondered how much fight he really had in him. Probably a lot of he could save her life while speared from behind. If anyone could pull out of this, he could, she was sure.

The honeysuckle paste was merely her way of trying to tip the scales in his favor. If they ever got rescued she would also go visit her grandmother's grave and thank her profusely for those summers as a child she was forced to weed and fertilize and harvest what had felt like her entire vacation. Had Kaoru known that a scant decade later she would be alone in the world but for Misao and the Makimachi branch of the family, she would have appreciated them more.

Light faded on them both in the room, Enishi silently breathing and Kaoru watching him breathe. It was worlds better than the tortured ravings of the night before, but Kaoru was unsure if his silence was because he was getting better or worse. She fell asleep jittery, pressed next to him as if she could use him as a blanket.

She got her answer when, in the middle of the night, she was pinned on her stomach with her arm wrenched behind her back.

"_What the hell!_" Kaoru yelled into the pile of shirts and leaves, slightly muffled, kicking her legs as if that would shift the weight on her back. "It's me, it's Kaoru!"

Her arm was wrenched harder for all of a second, then she felt the weight drop off her. In the dead of night, the darkness felt thick. Kaoru wasn't sure where Enishi was and while she had been seeking the comfort of his warmth before, that little interlude was a reminder that he was no teddy bear.

"How long has it been?"

Kaoru wanted to let him stew, but relented faster than she meant to because she was so happy he wasn't dead or insensible. "About a day and a half."

"Why am I sticky?"

"Ah, oh, that would be the honeysuckle I rubbed on your back. It's supposed to help infection?" Kaoru felt around for the food bowl, and found it without too much trouble. Luckily it had escaped their wrestling match. "I have food…"

Kaoru felt around for where Enishi was, and her hand came into contact with what she suspected was a rock hard thigh because she felt silk. Running her hand up to the edge of his pants, her fingers were brushing abs that still felt too hot to be normal body temperature when a hand clasped her wrist. He divested Kaoru of the bowl and she pulled her hand back quickly.

"What is this… stuff?"

"Taro. Boiled and mashed." There was no response in the darkness so Kaoru tried again. "See taro is a root, kind of like a potato only—"

Quickly, Enishi interrupted. "I know what taro is."

"The easiest way is to eat it with your fingers. I have some water too, when you're done." Kaoru, unable to resist bragging a little bit about how productive her day had been, added, "Not only did I cook but I did laundry yesterday, too, I'll have you know."

There was an amused snort, so Enishi had definitely heard her.

"How is it?"

The sound of ceramic being placed on floorboards let Kaoru know he was probably done with the small bowl of taro mash. "It tastes like soap."

"You aren't going to like breakfast then. Better learn to love it." She folded her arms in front of her, only to feel a masculine hand run itself from her calf up to her thigh. A shiver ran the length of her body but not a single cell protested his overly familiar touch.

"You said there was water." Enishi said, breaking Kaoru's fixation, and she took his hand in her own and guided him to the other ceramic bowl. Her heart was pounding in her ears.

Unable to leave well enough alone, she cleared her throat and bit out in a tone that only quivered at the start, "Does that taste like soap, too?"

Another snort from her companion was eaten by the darkness.


	5. The Rescue

Days melted into one another and Kaoru started to realize how easy it was to ignore the passage of time when preoccupied with the basic tasks of survival without modern conveniences. The time it took to harvest and prep food was prodigious, not to mention she had started to worry about possibly needing to cultivate the taro rather than merely consume it. That damp field was the best place and she could maybe use the shovel base that she found in the shed to start to turn the soil and plant starters. It wasn't something she relished doing, so at this point Kaoru was merely contemplating it.

While not fully out of the woods with his fever, Enishi had insisted on absconding with the mosquito netting one day and going fishing. Kaoru's increasingly alarmed arguments about how it was a terrible idea weren't about to dissuade him. He came back with some moderately sized fish that turned out to be more bones than meat, but Kaoru was grateful for the variety in their diet even as she was irritated all that night under the wet netting that had refused to fully dry before the sun set. He was also too sick to get up the entire rest of the following day.

She only said I told you so once.

Twice tops.

The single bar of soap became the focus of Kaoru's anxiety because it's all she had to clean just about anything with. As if to compensate, she never used it on herself. She had taken to using one of the old shirts as a washcloth and tried to wash off her body with warm purified water before sundown. After what she was pretty sure was about a week she took time to wash her hair with warm water and did the best she could to untangle and retie it up. Other than her hair never really feeling clean, she didn't feel like she was particularly dirty even if the clothes she wore never felt exactly clean either.

Enishi was dragging in more fuel for the firepit to Kaoru when she felt compelled to ask him, suddenly distraught, "What if I get a cavity?" He gave her the usual impassive stare, but he hadn't just dumped the branches and walked away so he was clearly in a mood to entertain her worries. "I mean, there's no dentist and people can die from their teeth rotting…"

Today Enishi was wearing his own leather shoes, the silk pants, and his suit vest and he should have looked ridiculous, but Kaoru was slowly coming to the realization that he was not only objectively handsome but also subjectively handsome to her in particular. It made looking at him more difficult. She tried to dismiss it, assuming it was the fact that he was literally the only other person on this island. But if he had bought her a drink in a bar she was increasingly certain she would have accepted it. Not that that was something Enishi did, she was pretty sure. If he went to bars it was because he had business to accomplish there.

"Are you prone to cavities?"

"Well, not exactly, but it's more the greater principle."

Enishi began to move away from her as soon as she said 'not exactly' and called over his shoulder instead, "Cook faster, it looks like it's going to rain and we still haven't successfully lit a fire in the stove."

Kaoru wanted to get semantic, pointing out that they had successfully lit a fire but they had been unsuccessful in making sure the smoke stack was redirecting the smoke outdoors instead of indoors. They had smelled of wood smoke that whole day and it had made Kaoru hungry for BBQ, but on the bright side they had not burned down the house.

Wiping sweat from her brow, tired of the oppressive humidity and heat, Kaoru thought that a little rain might be nice.

***

When there was nothing to do but sit across from one another in the couple of rooms that didn't leak and swell in the torrential downpour and driving winds, Kaoru wondered why she had ever thought rain would be anything other than a huge inconvenience.

"How are you not cold?" Kaoru directed the question, again, to Enishi's prone form next to her. He had lain on his side and closed his eyes as soon as it became apparent that there was going to be no more useful tasks to accomplish in the wake of the weather. It was as dark as dusk and only mid-afternoon.

As his response has been silence the first time she shouldn't have been surprised that it was silence again.

"Is there anything at all I could possibly offer you that would entice you into having a normal conversation with me? Like a regular person?" Kaoru pulled on yet another shirt, as if the layers would finally make her feel warm, or comforted. A drop of water hit her hand, and she hoped that was condensation and not a leak above.

Enishi cracked an eye open at her, she noticed, and she would have sworn she saw it roll before he closed it again and then sat up and regarded her with his usual regal casualness. "What do 'regular' people talk about?"

Flustered because she hadn't actually expected him to take her up on it, Kaoru tried not to sound too eager. "Friends and family? Hobbies? Stuff they watch on TV? I mean, I have a hard time imagining you watching tv, but maybe you like all sorts of shows…"

"I don't watch TV." Enishi deadpanned, pinning Kaoru down like a bug with his unblinking stare. "But I'm aware of it. People respond better to you when they think you share their interests. I read reviews and summaries sometimes."

"That's pretty cold. TV can be enjoyable, you know. Don't you want to enjoy things, too?"

Enishi looked at her like she was stupid. "I enjoy things."

"That," Kaoru said wish great amusement lacing her voice, "Remains to be seen. I mean, you're like this indestructible survival robot. Not that I'm not grateful for that!" She saw how his formerly indulgent expression was souring. Apparently even Enishi didn't like being called a robot, no matter how true it felt in a lot of ways.

"_Some people_ need to be better in control of themselves when circumstances demand it." His criticism was clear.

Kaoru knew she had asked for this conversation but she was still annoyed at the direction it was taking. "Yeah, well _some people_ need to get the pole out of their butt as well as their back!"

Enishi did the thing Kaoru had started to notice he would do when he felt defensive, and laid back down with his back to her instead of his front. Most of the time he always had a watchful eye on her, tracking her even when she was a mere blob past the edges of his vision. When they argued, which happened about once a day in some minor capacity, Kaoru felt that attention shift to anywhere but her and while it shouldn't have been an effective way to punish her she felt it keenly. They had to make this relationship work while they were stuck here, but at the same time Enishi expected Kaoru to be the one to compromise when they didn't agree. Typically she would wait it out and they wouldn't speak of it again, but this wasn't the same as who should have checked the smoke stack in the kitchen, or why fishing with their bedding was a bad practice. Kaoru had made it a little more personal.

"I don't think you're a robot, for what it's worth," Kaoru said to Enishi's still injured back. "But even you have to admit you're a pretty severe person, even here and now. I mean, you practically know my whole life story and I know almost nothing about you."

The silence felt less pointed, but Kaoru was pretty sure she should give up and settle down to sleep or something when against all expectation Enishi spoke up.

"Telling you about my life would be a non-negligible risk for you. I'm a technical consultant for more than strictly legitimate businesses. My associates are…" He hesitated.

"Not nice people, I guess."

Should could feel his smirk even if she couldn't see it. "To put it mildly."

"Well, you must solve some interesting problems for people sometimes, right?"

"Arranging an endless supply of burner phones isn't genius level work."

Kaoru gave a sharp laugh. "I'll eat this shirt if that's the only thing you do, because there's no way you would have stayed in that kind of work if that were true. And I'll tell you what, I also don't think you're in it for the money."

Enishi carefully resettled so that he was facing her, those light eyes of his about the only thing she felt like she could see clearly in the dark of the room. "What if I said I was in it for the money?"

"Then I'd call you a liar." Kaoru said, laughter in her voice as she poked him in the leg with her toe. It was about as close as she'd ever gotten to touching him casually, purposefully. Usually, any time they came into contact it was over passing food or tools to one another and followed immediately as often as not by a reflexive apology from Kaoru.

"Here—now—would be the only place I could let you." Enishi said it with a smile on his face, casually laid out, but she had no doubt of the truth in his words. He was the kind of man who wasn't about to allow himself to be challenged, and in a dark world fear and respect were equally useful. Maybe he really was protecting her by telling her nothing, but she wasn't the kind of person who believed people were meant to float on alone. Maybe he was so good at being a survivalist because that's all he ever did.

A dreary thought for a dreary day.

"Real friends can tell you like it is. I can't tell you have many times Misao has yelled at me when I felt fat, or Megumi laughed at me when I was having a bridezilla moment, and even Sano has had his moments of clarity when I start lecturing him about how to live his life when I don't even have mine in order. You need at least one person in your life that's allowed to call you on your bullshit."

Enishi was still biased towards amused, and for that Kaoru was grateful. Sometimes he simply tuned her out, like a radio frequency that had filled with static. "That's you, is it, Kaoru Kamiya?"

"Well, do you see anyone else here?" Kaoru gestured and then immediately wrapped her arms around her middle again as cold air swept over her. The broken window was impossible to board up entirely and the draft was terrible, particularly when the winds were high like today.

Warmth surrounded Kaoru when Enishi wrapped his arms around her from behind, and she allowed herself to lean into him. He could still have a low grade fever, and she should worry about that, but more importantly he was like a furnace compared to her and her shivers subsided immediately.

"If you cultivated more muscle you'd be less cold."

Kaoru wondered if he could sense her displeasure psychically. She concentrated on her gratefulness for his body heat instead. If her heart gave some rogue thumps from the reality of his proximity, well, there were things she could hold tight to inside her own soul and that fact would have to be one of them.

***

The first time the plane flew overhead, Kaoru was struck by the noise. In a lot of ways she had become in tune with the lack of human generated noises on the island, and so when the plane buzzed the open area where Kaoru was boiling water for her sponge bath, she covered her ears with her hands. Suddenly, realizing how silly she was being, she jetted up and waved frantically as she saw it start to circle back around with tears pricking her eyes.

Enishi broke into the clearing moments before the second pass, and was by her side in an instant, pulling her towards the trail to the sea by a hand. It was a sea plane, it seemed, and by the time they made it to the water it was bobbing on the ocean, propeller slowly idling. People in bright clothes were waving at them and shouting.

Kaoru was fully crying, but she wasn't ashamed. They were tears of relief and they were tears of joy, but in some ways they were also tears of pure terror. While they were saved (rescue at last!) the only way Kaoru was getting off of this island was on a plane. Unbidden, visions of oxygen masks dropping and retirees screaming and praying in different languages filled her mind and transposed over the emergency workers making their way over through the surf.

"_Kaoru,_" At once Kaoru noticed Enishi was shaking her by the shoulders while she gasped for air. He was saying her name over and over, stern in that way she knew meant he was worried.

Looking over at the smiling rescue workers, who were reaching out to her while speaking in gentle tones in a language she didn't know, she recoiled. "I can't fly again, I can't…" It was a mantra spilling out of her lips, as she searched Enishi's face for answers.

As a rescue worker in tan, wearing a baseball cap with some sort of official logo and a bright orange vest tried to place a hand on Kaoru's shoulder, she felt Enishi pivot them neatly out of the way then flinch as if he hadn't meant to do that. He relaxed his hold on her and addressed the recuse workers in English, then Japanese, then Chinese. When they responded positively to the last one, he appeared to hold a brief conversation. Questions and answers flowered around Kaoru in tonalities she had never studied. Meanwhile, she had her eyes fatalistically locked on the plane as if she could hypnotize herself with the lazy movement of the propeller.

"They want to examine us, can you stand on your own?" Enishi had stopped touching her to talk to the rescue workers, and she had sunk down to the sand.

"Of course I can stand," Kaoru said testily, but her eyes never left the plane, even as it felt like her heart couldn't leave the events surrounding the crash. She did not even move to stand, despite her brave words.

A worker knelt down to meet her at eye level and spoke softly in what she suspected was Chinese, but Kaoru shook her head. She didn't understand. When they took some medical tools out of a bag, Kaoru looked over at Enishi nervously, but he was impassively watching another man take his blood pressure with a portable cuff and a stethoscope. Kaoru looked back over at the man who was smiling indulgently at her as if she were a frightened child, and she straightened her spine and forced herself to sit more normally. She wasn't going to fall apart, not now, when they had come so far.

She had no clue what the emergency worker was saying, but they kept up a steady stream of conversation in that language she didn't speak. Probably, they had a great bedside manner, if only she knew. Maybe they were talking about their family, or how their pet dog had chewed through the screen door again and gotten out, or perhaps how lucky she was to have been found when surely the search for survivors was minutes from being abandoned. Kaoru, unable to match the gentle mood, kept seeking out Enishi with not so subtle glances in his direction. He seemed fully focused on whatever the other emergency worker was telling him, however.

Finally, whatever diagnostics that were required were over, and Enishi walked over at last. His renewed proximity brought down her anxiety by volumes, but the plane lingered at the edge of her vision and loomed large in her mind. She stood up to meet him, dusting the white sand from her hands for what she hoped would be the last time.

"I spoke to them, and they do have a sedative they can give you, if you're willing to take it."

Kaoru looked over to the men who were smiling at her like she was about to come unglued in front of them, and perhaps she was as she now made a concerted effort to not look at the plane. "I don't have much choice, do I?"

"There are always choices." Enishi said cryptically.

Kaoru looked over at the friendly rescue workers, then back at Enishi. "Promise me something. Promise me you'll make sure nothing happens to me while I'm out. You've watched my back this far. See it through to the end." She needed reassurance that she wasn't drugging herself merely to seal her own doom. It was an irrational fear, Kaoru knew, but she needed to feel at least a sliver of safety. It was weird to think this man, who was both stranger and close companion, would be the person on whom she hung her hope. But then, here they were.

Looking her up and down, almost judging her resolve, Enishi nodded shortly. "I will."


	6. The Return

The hospital room was painted an off white that was probably meant to be less severe and institutional than stark white, but somehow made Kaoru think of dirty sheets. After that random thought buzzed through her mind, she suddenly remembered that she had rejoined civilization because of the droning of a television in the room next door. Glancing to her left, she saw Enishi spinning a bottle of pills on its side lazily while staring out the window.

_He had stayed with her…_

"Hey," was all she could think to say, weirdly exhausted. As she raised her hand to gesture at him, she noticed the IV attached to her with displeasure when she felt the adhesive pull at her skin. "What the hell…?"

"Apparently, you were severely dehydrated. Which only makes sense if you were giving me the majority of the purified water instead of dividing it equally between us as I instructed you." The deadpan voice was somehow also full of recrimination.

"You're larger and you were doing more physical work, it made sense to me at the time."

"And here you are." He stopped spinning the pill bottle and pocketed it in some scrubs he was inexplicably wearing. "What would have happened if you had collapsed while we were out there?"

Kaoru smiled as he finally turned towards her, knowing his glower better than her own face after so many days without a mirror. "I assume you would have figured something out. You always do." He scowled at her but didn't disagree. "So… how did we end up here? Everything is so fuzzy… is it even the same day?"

"No." He paused and gave her a funny look Kaoru couldn't quite place before continuing. "We were transported here yesterday evening after waiting for additional instructions at the airfield for hours. You were given additional sedatives here when you became, ah, belligerent about the nurses changing your clothing and putting in an IV." He narrowed his eyes at her. "Before you went out the second time you told them to stop bothering you and pay attention to me as I was the one with a 'gaping hole in my back'. After forcing me to disrobe as well, they had me in surgery last night." He pulled up his shirt and Kaoru got an eyeful of abs before she saw the neatly wrapped bandages.

"Why in the world would you have hid something like that from them? I refuse to feel bad for ratting you out."

"I was healing acceptably."

A woman with a badge rushed in and gave a relieved gasp before calling out behind her in a language Kaoru didn't speak. She approached Enishi, saying something that sounded like scolding, and Kaoru wondered if maybe some inflections transcended speech. Enishi, for his part, didn't respond at first, then gestured towards the empty bed next to Kaoru's. More words came from the nurse before she turned to Kaoru and spoke in heavily accented English.

"Tell your friend he cannot leave his room." She paused. "Or steal clothes!" Well, that explained why he wasn't in a hospital gown like Kaoru's.

"One bed is exactly like another," Enishi said, also transitioning back to English. "Just take the piece of paper with my name scribbled on it and slide it into the placeholder outside. I have all the silly medications you gave to me, there isn't anything else to move. End of discussion."

The woman tried to appeal to him in Chinese once more, but Enishi truly was done talking about it so she threw up her hands and exited. Kaoru wondered if they would return with security to remove him to his room, or if they would let him have his way. Not so secretly, she hoped they would let him stay in her room. She wasn't ready to be parted from him yet and she was afraid if he left her sight now that he would disappear out into the world like a ghost.

"How are we even supposed to leave? I have no ID, no money, absolutely nothing. How are they even going to figure out who we are?"

Enishi wandered away from the window closer to her bedside. "There are flight manifests, records of tickets purchased, etc. and I imagine the embassy will find us at some point if we don't find them first. We're not the only survivors, we're merely the last they think they'll find. We apparently missed the first crush of press interested in the story, so we'll probably be left alone."

Kaoru was relieved there were other survivors, but she suspected Enishi was more concerned with remaining as anonymous as possible. After so long away from people, Kaoru had to admit this was already a bit overwhelming. Adding in the language barrier, it actually felt almost as isolating in this hospital full of people she couldn't talk to as the island itself.

"Do you think someone could get me a laptop? Or a phone or something?"

Looking at her like she was mad, Enishi put the pieces together fast enough. "You wish to contact your family."

"I mean, they probably think I'm dead. Knowing Misao, she's been saying she thinks I'm alive while secretly thinking I'm dead but I don't think I want to leave her in suspense." Kaoru looked at the beeping monitor hooked up to her and then back down at the IV. It had been a long time since she had been in a hospital, since her parents probably. "Maybe it would be nice to hear her voice even if it will be all screaming and blubbering. Don't you have someone you need to contact, too?"

Enishi quirked an eyebrow her way. "Everything I need to do should be done in person."

"Let me guess, it's all about those bad guys you work with doing that job you won't tell me about." She sounded petulant. "Are you telling me you seriously have no one…?"

"_No._ Drop it." His jaw clenched, as did his fists. She was pushing buttons she knew he had but Kaoru had never approached. Sometimes triggering conversations were healing and sometimes they were merely waving red flags in front of bulls, and Kaoru knew when to back away.

But at the same time unwilling to fully relinquish the topic, Kaoru added, "In the future, if you get into a terrible accident and you're not sure if anyone would like to be told that you're ok I know that I would appreciate a call."

Sighing, Enishi sank into the bed next to Kaoru's and pulled the dividing curtain with a sharp metallic shifting of ball bearings. "There's a button on the side of the bed, if you call someone in I'll translate for you. But you probably don't want to use a phone given there's a roughly thirteen hour time difference."

"Thank you, Enishi, truly."

"Don't mention it." On the other side of the curtain he must have drawn the shade because the room became perceptibly darker. "Really, don't mention it."

***

Kaoru felt like she had had all the energy she needed to perform all the daily tasks she had set herself on the island, but somehow simply laying around in a hospital bed was infinitely more exhausting. It was probably accumulated stress and she wondered if maybe she should invest in some therapy when she got back home.

Once a laptop was brought to her, which took hours to procure, she slowly tapped out a message to Misao. It took a lot longer than she expected because for one she was still pretty groggy and for another the laptop had a Chinese keyboard and it was severely disorienting to navigate. Then there was the fact that her email site was apparently blocked in China, but once she started griping about it Enishi worked some kind of magic and handed it back to her with a browser up, in English, with an email login page.

Kaoru painstakingly typed out one email roughly outlining things and then sent it en masse to her friends and family. There were also awkward moments where she had to decide if she included Aoshi or not on the email, and changed her mind at least twice. In the end she included his work email. She mentioned that she would not have reliable access to computers or phone but she would try to contact them as she could, suddenly also realizing that she didn't have any of their phone numbers memorized. Damn it all, she'd have to rebuild her contact list! Yet another indignity to stack on to the hours in the passport office and DMV, and who knew what other governmental office as she reestablished her identity on plastic cards.

In her rambling email not once did she mention Enishi by name. Somehow, she was sure he didn't want that, even though she wanted to sing his praises and complain about him in the same breath. That could be saved for when Kaoru saw Misao in person. She'd probably have a lot of time to speak with her cousin now that she was almost certainly fired from her job as well. It occurred to her that she should probably be responsible and send an email to her boss and coworkers, but for once Kaoru felt a rebelliousness of spirit and instead shut down the browser and handed the computer to Enishi.

"You can undo whatever you did to get me to my email, I think I'm all done."

He didn't say anything from his side of the curtain for long moments.

"Tomorrow we go to the embassy."

"Ok, _boss_." She injected exactly enough sarcasm into that word that she was rewarded with a snort. That was just as good as a laugh out of a normal person and she tried to settle into a comfortable position despite the IV preventing her from laying on her side. If she had a shoe she would have thrown it at the wall since her surely deaf neighbor was still blasting whatever TV program featured constant talking heads and audience laughter.

She had wanted to be rescued, she reminded herself, and once she got home and back to normal then all this would be a funny anecdote she would relay at parties or something. And Enishi…?

_We._

Kaoru lay back with an unbidden smile.

***

For a twelve hour flight, Kaoru was given two pills, one to be taken directly before boarding and one to be taken eight hours later. The laundry list of side effects were upsetting—sedation, dizziness, weakness, confusion, difficulty speaking, hypersensitivity—but the thought of being fully conscious and fully screaming while she and Enishi flew over the Pacific Ocean was far worse. And the last time she had accepted a pill over conscious memory of a flight she was mentally unable to process it had turned out ok. Thanks to Enishi. So Kaoru didn't really have any reason to think this would be any different. She had even had a chance to send another email about her flight details, in hopes that Misao would be able to fly out and meet her.

And maybe they could take the train together back home.

Yet another airport worker was speaking to Enishi about her instead of asking her questions directly, but she barely snapped at them this time. He did, after all, essentially intercept anyone who was moving towards them too quickly and his very physicality wasn't to be denied. Kaoru was no shrinking violet, but Enishi radiated something that made people look at him then pretend like they hadn't been looking at all. In another life, with that hair and his build, he would have made a really convincing boy band member. So long as no one really asked him to sing. Or smile. Or dance.

Then again, as he maneuvered through the airport crowds with feline grace she could well believe he would be a good dancer if he thought the skill worth his time.

"You're falling behind." Enishi had come to a full stop rather than continue at his brisk pace to the gate, and Kaoru had nearly run into him after a step or three. Her outstretched hands braced against his back, and she saw him wince with a hissing outward breath.

"Oh my gosh, I didn't mean to, I know your stitches are still healing." He wasn't interested in discussing his pain. This close, Kaoru wished he would turn and embrace her like those nights they needed the warmth and cursed the timing of those inconvenient feelings. In the ill-fitting clothes given to them through the charity of the embassy she wondered what kind of picture they presented to outsiders. Travelers with no luggage, each of them clutching no more than boarding passes, pill bottles, and a small wad of per diem cash to buy some food or a magazine before the flight. Did they look like a couple? People were sort of treating them as one.

"You'll need to take your first pill soon. It will take time to work so you don't want to wait until we board." He turned towards her finally and Kaoru was pleased he didn't put any further distance between them.

"From hospital food to airport food. I almost miss the taro mash. Almost." They went to stand in line at a fast food place. "Do you… I don't know, miss anything about the island? I know it sounds stupid, I mean it's only been a couple days."

Enishi glanced down at Kaoru's earnest face and a strange emotion jetted across his face. "I miss the simplicity. It was easy to know what the next step was, what the day held." His moment of sincerity was over, however, and the mask fell into place once more.

"I felt like I had figured out something I was kind of good at, did you know I had a whole plan to grow a proper field of taro like a farm? It was nice to be useful, to be really doing something needed every single day. Answering phones and refilling coffee pots isn't nearly as fulfilling. And we were a good team, I thought."

"I agree," Enishi said, and their gazes held longer than Kaoru figured because the line had moved substantially by the time they faced forward once more.

As soon as Kaoru scarfed down her lukewarm sausage breakfast sandwich and lorazepam things got a little hazy. But at least she was sure she would be taken care of, because Enishi's large hands were guiding her shoulders through the airport and the heat of them radiated to her core. She hoped to everything holy she wasn't saying those thoughts out loud, but she supposed he would attribute anything weird she said to the drugs. Beautiful drugs. Beautiful Enishi.

***

Kaoru awoke with the crappy overlarge purple rayon dress she had boarded the plane in twisted around her waist, and she pushed off the crisp sheets to look around. The room was frigid for one. Blinds that would have rendered the room absolutely dark were only partially drawn and Kaoru stared out at what she assumed was a smoggy view of Los Angeles from some high-rise condo. It only took a moment to glance over at the walk in closet full of expensive suits and neatly folded exercise wear to figure out whose condo it was.

Taking a moment to put pieces together, Kaoru remembered the Chinese airport, fawning all over Enishi, taking their seats on the plane, falling asleep on Enishi, some sort of hazy argument about her pill (with Enishi), then much fuzzier memories of stumbling around and yelling… presumably at Enishi. Well, on the bright side, this was a pretty comfortable bed even if she felt like the mattress was on the hard side. No alarm clock, but then people used their phones for that for the most part. No art. No personal pictures. At least there was a rug on the hardwood, even if was a boring solid color. Everything looked modern and deeply lonely.

Venturing out of the bedroom, there was a living room that looked more like a dentist's waiting area with long narrow leather couches and a wide oblong coffee table. The kitchen had state of the art appliances that looked as if they had never been used besides the blender, dishes with honest to God dust on them, and a refrigerator full of bottled water and energy drinks. A quick look under the sink revealed a garbage full of molding take out containers, but then taking out the trash probably hadn't been his first order of business upon returning to his home.

Kaoru stared down at her feet, where the only polish left were flakes on her big toes, and thought about how she desperately needed some personal grooming time. Her hair was a bird's nest, she was a level of hairy that she never expected to reach except for that one time in college when she had tried to be more 'natural', and she smelled like weird soap from the Chinese hospital. It wasn't how she wanted to feel when she nervously approached the only closed door in the whole condo and gave a tentative knock before immediately rubbing the goosebumps on her bare arms.

Cracking the door when she got no answer, she finally found the only room Enishi actually lived in: his computer room. Huge monitors dominated the windowless wall. Empty energy drinks littered various surfaces along with wires and bits of technology that looked like projects. Neatly packed lines of wires were strapped in parallel to power sources, and hard drives hummed. Enishi swiveled around in his computer chair, lit only by the flashing monitors, and Kaoru tried not to startle as he swiftly stood and strode over to her while pulling off wireless headphones. He would have been intimidating if he had been the Enishi she had first seen on the island, suit clad and serious, but this Enishi was almost approachable in comparison. Barefoot, in a navy track suit, huge round glasses dominating his face. It felt like he was in a state not many people were privy to, and she felt herself blush even if the intimacy was imagined.

"Your glasses are enormous!" was all she could think to say before forcing her mouth shut quickly, and he rolled his eyes before turning back to his room and gesturing for Kaoru to follow. At least it was warm enough in here for her with all the humming tech.

"Obviously I haven't replaced my normal glasses, yet."

Kaoru tried not to giggle. "Yeah, but the fact that you have these means you bought and wore these at one time…" She picked up an empty can of energy drink and dropped it in a bin where more empties lay. "You really drink this much garbage? Do you even sleep?"

"Sometimes there are more important things to achieve than sleep. If illegal stimulants didn't have so many negative side effects I would still…" Kaoru's mouth was puckering and she knew it, but Enishi didn't stop his train of thought on account of her disapproval. "Here we are."

Looking at him curiously, she watched as he forced a smartphone into her hands. It was so new there was still a plastic screen protector on it that needed to be peeled away. It looked expensive. Enishi watched her, waiting for a reaction.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Kaoru finally said.

"It's yours. Connect to your email and contact your family. I suspect they came to the airport to find you, but as it so happened you were not in a mood to be steered and I wasn't about to leave you alone in the company of strangers until your relatives came to collect you." He talked about her like she was so much baggage, but the phone was a nice gesture so Kaoru figured maybe it canceled out the comment.

She turned the glossy phone about in her hands, feeling how thin it was, how sleek. "This looks brand new. It has to be expensive, I can't accept this."

"Don't insult me." Enishi watched her face carefully. "I know how much we both lost recently. This is something I can do, and I'm not often this altruistic." He went to sit down and continued to tap out information into an online form. It looked to Kaoru like he was filing an insurance claim, and it made sense that given how expensive all his stuff seemed that he would have some sort of travel insurance.

There was a low bench nearby at a worktable that had a soldering iron, some circuit boards, and not much else so she sat down there and pressed the power button. It had been a few years since she set up a phone, but there were sure a lot more welcome screens than the last phone she had bought. Eventually, she had to interrupt Enishi, which she did reluctantly.

"I need to connect to the wifi." She had called it over her shoulder, so when long fingered hands plucked the phone from her overhead she had to force herself not to lash out at him instinctively with an elbow. Smiling in a smug way that made Kaoru really wish she had hit him after all, he handed the phone back. Once she was connected to her mail she was awash in crazed and worried emails from Misao. Kaoru sent Misao her new phone number and waited, feeling guilty, for the inevitable call. "I don't even know your address. What do I tell Misao when she calls me?"

"I can send you anywhere she needs you to be." Enishi said, and in his computer chair with his wall of monitors he felt farther away than ever before even when moments ago Kaoru felt like he was too close for comfort. There was tension in the air that she hadn't noticed before, and she wondered if it was discomfort at Kaoru being in his inner sanctum or something else she wasn't fully grasping.

Instead of sitting there staring at him, she blurted out, "This may sound weird, but would it be ok if I used your shower? It's been a while since the hospital—"

"It's fine." He interrupted Kaoru before she could stumble through more excuses. He followed it up with his own stilted words. "I'm going to order some food. I assume you're also hungry."

"Starving."

It wasn't until she was getting into his enormous glass walled shower that she wondered why he had so willingly opened up his private spaces to her. For all his talk of not needing friends on the island, he'd certainly leaned in to welcoming her without much struggle. It was plenty to chew on in her mind as she rubbed expensive citrus scented body wash on tired limbs.

***

"I wish you could get clothes delivered, like food." Clad in his long black bathrobe, the charity underwear from the embassy, and nothing else, Kaoru munched on Chinese food in Enishi's weird living room and monitored her phone. It had been less than an hour, but Misao was too twitchy not to check her phone frequently.

"I can have clothes delivered." Enishi speared an eggroll with a chopstick and ate it in one bite.

"Undergarments and all, that fit me, in less than a day? Ha, right!"

He looked her up and down in a way that made her blood heat up, as Kaoru knew that after so long sleeping next to one another on the island he probably actually did know her body well enough to describe her size to a stranger. "Yes. But if I do you can't ask me where they come from. I won't know."

"Ok, I guess. I hope you don't mean they're stolen or something."

"No, but I also don't ask questions. Otowa has certain tastes and I can't guarantee you'll like it."

Kaoru's new phone rang, and she almost fell off her chair as she lunged forward and juggled it in greasy hands. Finally, almost shaking with excitement, she heard Misao's voice and hot tears pricked her eyes. She saw Enishi's form migrate towards the kitchen, his own phone to his ear as she heard him speak in staccato sentences to the person on the other end. Kaoru's focus was fully on Misao and the blubbering happiness and worry that she had been waiting to hear from someone, anyone, as the real proof that her life would have mattered to someone even if she hadn't been found. The emotions were life affirming, and Kaoru felt the love keenly.

She promised Misao that she would not fly again. She promised Misao that she would keep her phone by her side for the next year. She promised Misao that the next vacation of any sort she took would not be alone. She promised Misao that she hadn't skipped out of the airport as a cruel joke, that it had in fact been a mix of Enishi's overprotectiveness and lots of anxiety medication.

Then came the long pause from the other end that signaled all kinds of trouble. "Who's Enishi?" was the seriously loaded question.

"You know how I said there was another person on the island…?"

"Yes, and let me tell you, that was not enough information by half considering how long you were gone, and don't you even use that line that you used in the email about being tired or dehydrated or on drugs or whatever because you have a lot of explaining to do and don't you think for one second that I won't see if there are things you aren't telling me because I can sense it. I know you Kaoru Kamiya!"

Enishi had appeared back in the room, leaning against the entranceway to the kitchen with arms folded. "Your cousin is loud."

Misao heard that well enough, even in the background, and immediately began telling Kaoru that she had a duty to her family to inform them the about the kind of company she was keeping. Meanwhile, Kaoru wrangled Misao back into some semblance of a normal mood so that she could get details about which hotel she was staying at and how she needed a bit of time to acquire new clothes ("What do you mean you don't have clothes?!") before she got in a cab and met up with her. Soon, Kaoru swore, she would be with her and they would get a train home. Misao started to ask why they couldn't take a plane, but then seemed to think better of it when stony silence greeted that suggestion.

It shouldn't have been a relief to finish the conversation, but somehow it was. The comfortable silence with Enishi settled in, and that combined with a warm body and a full belly made Kaoru feel languid. So languid, in fact, that when Enishi pulled up the corner of his robe to again cover her bare shoulder where the overlarge article of clothing had slipped down, she practically leaned back against him. Ok, not just practically, she indeed leaned back against him and felt calloused fingers trace a light pattern against her clavicle.

"You don't need to leave so soon."

"I know I told you I needed help, but you've seen your promise through. I can't imagine someone taking better care of me." She covered one of his hands with hers to still it, and tried to strengthen her resolve. Now that she was home what she needed was family… right? "Besides, didn't you say that you were dangerous?"

"I said my lifestyle was dangerous, but you can infer the other." Kaoru felt his fingers leave her neck and comb gently through her long partially wet hair as it hung loose down her back. "There's nothing for you in your old home."

That wasn't for him to say. "I have friends and family! An apartment, a job—maybe—and lots of loose ends to tie up regarding a wedding I didn't have. I can't run away from that."

"You've spent the past two weeks telling me, without my asking, about how trapped you feel by all those things. Do you feel trapped with me?" Gently, he pulled her hair so that she had to look up at him. Even behind those ridiculous glasses she could see that there was something in his eyes that seemed familiar and at last she could put a name to it. It lit her nerve endings on fire in a way Aoshi's fond glances never had. This was desire, maybe even covetousness.

Kaoru realized he was still waiting for an answer. "No."

"Maybe I'd like to trap you with me." When he leaned down to kiss her, he must have felt her hesitation because he pulled back just enough before their lips touched to say, "You don't remember anything you said to me on the plane, do you?"

Oh lord, no. No, she didn't. Not specifically, anyway. She assumed she had blubbered on about how handsome he was and how gentlemanly he had been on island because that's all she allowed her conscious mind to stray towards so how could Non-Sober-Kaoru have communicated something salacious enough to bring on this transformation?

"I'm thinking maybe I propositioned you?" She hazarded a guess, as mortified as she was.

"You _proposed_. Multiple times. Loudly." He was enjoying her embarrassment, the bastard. "You said you wanted to make an honest man of me after all those nights we slept together. _Loudly._"

Kaoru was wishing the floor would swallow her up and she pulled his robe around her more closely, awash in what she assumed was his scent even if it wasn't precisely the one she knew from the island. "I can say absolutely truthfully the last thing I want to do right now is marry anyone. I thought you barely tolerated me, anyway." She mumbled the last bit, half to herself.

His response was susurrus but seemingly serious. "Let's just say that you reminded me there are some things I might want in my life that money can't buy."

What the heck did he mean by that?

"…And you also kept complaining to me that you didn't get a proper honeymoon." Back to mocking.

A memory from the flight hit her like a sledgehammer, rubbing a small circle against his tense inner thigh, whispering in his ear. He could help her, she had said, friends helped one another didn't they? She could just imagine how she had looked, lips parted and pupils blown while Enishi regarded her with that usual mix of disdain and disinterest. Feigned disinterest, it would seem. Maybe she had been too obsessed with how he kept her at arm's length to see every inch of ground she had actually gained.

"Kamiya, this is where you sputter excuses at me, reclaim your pretense at platonic friendship and walk out of my life." Enishi, now glacial and casually cruel, sat down across from her and picked up the last eggroll before tossing it aside with disgust and pulling out his phone.

"I'll stay, thanks."

"Don't worry your clothes will get here shortly and then you can—" Enishi looked at a loss for words, having already scripted his response to her retreat in his own mind. So much so that it took time to catch up to reality and set his phone back down. "What?"

Kaoru took a steadying breath. This was the man that saved her life, that guarded her like a bulldog across an ocean, and who seemed to have been rejecting her before she could reject him. Kaoru wondered who taught him that move. "You asked me to stay for a while longer, and I said yes. Even if you seem to want to torment me a bit, I think there's a piece of you that might be sincere about this. So I'll take the bait."

Enishi glanced out of the living room window at the vague outline of a city beyond for a time, thoughtful skepticism playing over his handsome face. "Did you call me bait? What's the prize?"

Kaoru bit nervously at an overlong thumbnail, not hard enough to break it, more scraping it across the tips of her bottom front teeth. "Friendship?" she hazarded, knowing that was the closest thing to a bald lie she had told him in the time of their acquaintance. That overlarge robe fell off the same shoulder as earlier, and Kaoru's breathing sped up so much that she had to hold her breath to calm it down.

He looked at Kaoru like she had sprouted wings or something, then ground out a gravelly laugh. In the entire time they had been together he hadn't laughed like this, like something about what she said honestly surprised him.

"You don't believe me!" Kaoru tried to be offended.

"_You_ don't believe you." He pulled off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes before replacing them and crossing his arms defensively. "Fine, I'll take the bait as well."

In the back of her mind, Kaoru wondered what Enishi thought he was agreeing to when she told him to 'see it through to the end'.

The other side of the robe fell off her shoulder, and Kaoru clutched the dark material to her chest tightly as their eyes locked. Muscles shifted as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. Kaoru audibly swallowed. She wasn't hungry at all after their meal but she felt ravenous.

Standing suddenly, Enishi ground out. "Go back to the bedroom. I don't want Otowa seeing you like this."

"Embarrassed about me already?" Kaoru threw out lightly, standing as proudly as she could manage, but there was a sting to his words she couldn't hide from her response. Maybe this bad idea was worse than she originally thought.

By her side before she could blink, she felt him grab the robe by its belt that rested at her hip level and pulled her flush against him. Hands sill clasped in front her, she marveled at how very different it was to be so close now that the energy between them crackled with unknown hours of pent up feelings.

"No. Not embarrassed."

He was still guarding her, Kaoru realized, trying to keep her separate from his other life. She would let him for now, but there would be a reckoning at some point. This close, it only took raising up on the balls of her feet to steal a kiss, and he leaned down to meet her halfway.

***

Otowa rang the doorbell in that way Yukishiro hated, pressing it over and over so that only first few chimes could fire. He was the one who had demanded these clothes immediately on pain of wiping out all her social media profiles, and he would really do it the utter prick. Open toed Louboutin tapping out her irritation, Hyoko dropped the Nordstrom's bag full of flouncy skirts and tops at the doorstep and stalked away. She was going to give Yukishiro a piece of her mind as soon as she found out what kind of slut this girl was that has somehow caught the eye of a man she had safely filed away as 'asexual' in her mental rolodex of hot men. Even thinking it was relaxing, even if she knew she'd never raise her voice in the boss' direction if she wanted to keep her fingers unbroken. The most recent acrylics she had applied were expensive and she wasn't about to wreck a good mani like that.

Gein, who had picked up the boss last night, had said this girl hadn't looked like anything special, spouting nonsense and flopping everywhere. Maybe it was a drug thing, but then the boss wasn't into that either. Traumatic life events changed people, though. Who knew what a couple weeks on a deserted island had done to his, admittedly volatile, mental state.

It wasn't for her to worry, though. The boss always had everything under control, ultimately. A little insanity was the price they paid for evil genius.


End file.
